


killer instincts

by winterbones



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jurassic Park AU, Jurassic World, everything is better with dinosaurs, not sex but pretty gorey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 03:33:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4289109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"if there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is."</p><p>everything is better with dinosaurs (unless you're the one running from dinosaurs)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. man creates dinosaur

“You need to get out.”

Lydia didn’t glance away the string of DNA coding her computer rapidly broke down— _avian bird holding the gneome steady, no signs of major cell deterioration. Delta’s looking good._

“Lydia.”

She reached over and flicked on the tiny light beneath her microscope. “I get out,” she said.

Allison’s answer to that was a snort of disbelief. “You haven’t been off the isle in weeks,” she said. “You really should come with me. A few days on a beach _not_ infested with formally extinct wildlife.”

Now Lydia did look up, and grinned. “And play third-wheel to your hot date?”

Lydia wouldn’t have, personally, worn Allison’s choice of civvies. The jeans were nice, but they were _jeans_ , and while her button down was a pretty soft, pastel pink her legs were encased in sturdy boots. She looked ready for a hike— _not_ a two-day long sun-drenched beach vacation with her latest boy.

“Those boots do not say ‘I am over Scott McCall’.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “I _am_ over Scott McCall.”

“Tell me you at least packed a bikini that only just edges into the legal limits of decency.” Lydia might have to wear a bland lab coat, but beneath it she wore top shelf skirts and blouses. Last night she’d meticulously picked out a mint godet skirt and a flirty loose-slevved white blouse, both complimented by her black Saint Laurent heels. Allison had laughed at her the entire time, still covered in mud from her a hike through research.

She’d been begging Allison since they moved in together on the Isla Nebular to let her have a go at her closet. Allison’s reaction had always been something akin to amused horror.

“You’ll never know if you don’t come,” Allison said.

“Gross.” She made a show of wincing. “Anyway, I can’t. Mr. Masrani wants me running some tests this weekend.”

“You’re entire job is running tests.”

She tapped her fingers on her desk, mouth twisted down into a moue of unhappiness. “Yes, but I have to do them ‘in the field’. Dr. Wu’s new asset is opening to the public in three weeks and Mr. Masrani wants every T crossed, every I dotted.”

Those hadn’t been his exact words, of course.

_“I haven’t had anything to do with the asset,” Lydia had pointed out. “I’ve been assigned almost completely to work with the raptors—”_

_“Exactly,” Masrani had agreed. He’d just landed on the isle, his sunglasses still hung from the bridge of his nose. “You’re a neutral third-party. Dr. Wu’s the only one who’s had any say in the genetic make-up of the dinosaur. I want you to take blood samples, tissue samples, plasma samples, everything. I want an outside perspective.”_

_“Alright. I’ll have a team go in and take—”_

_“Miss Martin, I want you to handle this personally.” When Lydia had stared at him, Masrani’s face split into a wide grin. “Get out! Explore! Have you ever been more than five miles outside this facility?”_

Of course she hadn’t. She hated hiking.

“Genetic modifications,” Allison muttered, the scowl on her face stared her opinion quite clearly. Lydia kept hers to herself—whatever her personal thoughts, she owed her loyalty to the lab. “What happened to the days when _living, breathing_ dinosaurs were enough of a wow factor?”

“That before the dawn of the internet,” Lydia pointed out. “Before movies could create convincing CGI imitations. Jurassic World needs to keep pushing limits if it’s to stay the number one destination hot spot.”

“Ugh.” Allison planted her hand on her hip, head thrown back in irreverence. She was head of the ACU, her perspective on the animals in Jurassic World far different than Lydia’s. Lydia saw innovation, Allison saw more challenging containment. “I’m sure Mr. Masrani would understand if you got to it on Monday—most people are _supposed_ to take weekends off.”

“I told him it was fine—I’m already going to be here,” Lydia said. “Mom’s sending the kids over.”

“The kids? I thought that was next weekend?”

“She it pushed forward a week.” _That_ conversation hadn’t exactly been splendid—Lydia hadn’t been fond of husband number three, but divorce was hell on kids who were… _shit. How old are my brothers?_

“So what—you’re going to be working while your brothers are here? To see you? For a family vacation?”

“I’m going to spend time with them,” Lydia said, shoulders hunched. It was stupid to feel defensive. “I’ll get this finished today and spend the whole weekend with them. Doing family stuff.”

“Family stuff.”

“Yes. _Family stuff_ —don’t you have a boat to catch?”

“Shit, you’re right.” Allison pivoted on her heels, hand lifted in a jaunty wave. “Be back in two days. Try to let my park fall apart in the meantime?”

“Damn. And here I was all ready to open every paddock, sit back with a martini, and enjoy the destruction.”

“Cute.” Allison ducked out the door. She poked her head back through a minute later. “And for your information, I _did_ pack that bikini.”

“I wish you many, many happy orgasms,” Lydia called, and cackled when another lab tech walking by tripped.

When Allison was gone the smile feel away, and Lydia turned back to her microscope. She couldn’t focus passed a beat of annoyance. Masrani’s order wasn’t a problem. Lydia hated hiking but she could deal, provided she coated herself in a thick layer of OFF. It wasn’t even babysitting her brothers for the weekend—though the decade age different between Holt, the oldest, and the sixteen year age difference between Max, the youngest, made interactions with her brothers awkward at best.

No, it was the little addendum Masrani had added on his way out the door.

_“The dinosaur is nothing like we, or the world, has ever seen before. We don’t know its capabilities. I want an expert in, to monitor its predator instincts, see if the enclosure is up to par—that sort of thing.”_

_“I can have Mr. McCall—”_

_“Mr. McCall isn’t a hunter—he’s a paleontologist. I want Derek Hale to accompany you. While you’re running your tests, he can run his.”_

_Masrani laughed at Lydia’s look open-mouthed horror._

_“Oh—and have fun, Lydia.”_

Her cell phone buzzed in her lab coat pocket. She’d had park security go down to pick up her brothers, since she’d wanted to finish her biopsy of Delta’s liver enzymes. She was sure she going to get a lecture from her mother about that.

She pushed away from her desk, peeled off her lab coat. _Greet the kids, she mentally ticked off, set them up in the hotel, drag Derek Hale to the Indominus Rex enclosure… and try not to kill him._

“You got this,” she muttered. “Probably.”

 

 

 

“Blue! I see you! Don’t give me that _shit_!”

Reptilian eyes blinked up at Derek owlishly, scaled neck cocked in consideration. After a moment, lips peels away to display rows of razor-sharp raptor teeth. Someone would say, if they didn’t know better, it looked like the animal was smiling. Derek did know better.

Blue was smiling. She had the instinct of an alpha, and every day it was Derek’s challenge to maintain his position in the pack hierarchy. One day Blue was going to take it from him.

“Eyes up!” He raised his hand, clutching their training clicker, and four pairs of eyes—three slit like lizard eyes, one beady and birdlike—followed him. “And— _follow_.”

Hand still raised Derek walked along the catwalk above the enclosure. Claws crunched over moss and dried leafs as the raptors followed intently. This wasn’t the first exercise they’d done, but it had been the most successful—he’d gotten them to halt their hunt. That was a level of respect no one had achieved before.

They reached the far end of the enclosure, where a bucket of mice dangled over the railing. Blue and her sisters took turns leaping for it whenever Derek put it out, constantly frustrated with its height.

“Eyes here,” he said. “Eyes here! Charlie, Echo, _Delta_ —pay attention.” He reached into a bucket and fished out a mouse. “Good going girls. This is for Charlie,” he tossed it and reached for another. “Echo.” Toss. “Delta.” Toss.

Derek lifted the last one, Blue’s eyes followed it hungrily. Names were important, and placed Derek as a provider in the raptor pack. So long as the raptors knew he could give them food his position as alpha went unchallenged. Blue, especially, had to be made aware of that fact.

“And this—this is for _Blue_.” He tossed it down and Blue leapt, her teeth clamped down on the mouse in midair. When she finished munching Derek said, “Alright. Good job girls. And— _release_.” He dropped his hand and the raptors took off, Blue at the head, their shrieks loud and happy.

Derek released his breath. Today had been a good day—most days the raptors liked to test him, butt against his will, see his limits. Even though they’d imprinted on him at birth, they knew he wasn’t one of them.

He only became aware of the clapping from his observers when he came off the catwalk. Scott grinned at him, one hand lifted in a thumbs up. The kid was fresh out of college and thrilled to be working with living, breathing dinosaurs—especially the raptors. He’d done his dissertation under Dr. Alan Grant, apparently.

“Even got Blue to listen this time around,” Scott said. They’d both been working with Blue extensively, to the point where Blue accepted both Derek and Scott’s membership in the pack—but that was a tenuous position at best, and easily altered.

“You actually got them to listen!” Peter Hale said, shouldering aside Scott. Scott rolled his eyes, but left Derek to handle his uncle.

“Today. Tomorrow could be a different story.”

“C’mon, Derek, don’t start with _that_ —”

Derek maneuvered around Peter to follow Scott down the grate steps toward the raptor’s smaller paddock. They were typically allowed to roam free in their large enclosure, but any skin-to-scale interaction Derek and Scott performed had to be done in the safety of the paddock and the harness.

“I’m not starting that,” Derek said. “That implies that I’m open to the idea, which I’m not. The raptors can’t be trained, Peter. Not like that. Not for that. They’re wild animals. They follow me because they’ve imprinted on me, and because I make sure we maintain a level of respect and trust.”

“Exactly. They follow _you_. You’re the alpha—”

“And a week from now they could decide they _don’t_ want to follow me. They’re wild animals.” He’d worked with abused lions and wolves in California before his uncle had recruited him to Jurassic World. That was the one hard lesson the animals had to teach—they weren’t domesticated, they weren’t tamed, their loyalty was not promised.

And raptors? Raptors had 75 million years of hunting extinct.

“Derek,” Peter said at his side. “You know when I brought you here it wasn’t just for ‘research’. Imagine what our government would be willing to pay if we could send raptors into hot zones instead of our soldiers.”

Scott glanced over at Derek as they entered the paddock, opening and closing his hand in an imitation of the song and dance Peter gave them every week.

“And I said _no_. They’re not ready for the field, they’ll never be—”

“Pig loose! Pig loose!” Above Derek’s head feet pounded hard on the grating above a squeal of panic.

One of the raptors shrieked.

Trepidation made Derek rush toward the gate sealing off the enclosure—just as one of the trainers fell from the catwalk. The raptors scented new prey and circled, already moved into a kill formation.

“Shit—Liam.” Scott leapt to his feet, but Derek was ahead of him. The enclosure gate was still slowly opening as he tucked and rolled under it.

“ _Stop_!” He put as much command in his voice as he could, hands lifted and fingers splayed. It had been years since he’d been in the enclosure with the raptors, not since they had reached his waist, and he sensed their curiosity, their interest, like a palpable thing. “Stand down, girls.”

“Derek, are you crazy?”

“You put twenty-thousand volts into these animals they’re never going to trust me again,” Derek said, words targeted at the security officers on the catwalk, guns aimed at Derek’s raptors. “Stand down.”

Behind him, the trainer eased himself into the paddock. Derek shifted an inch to the lift, blocking him from the raptors’ view. They knew Derek. They didn’t know the kid. He was counting on their hesitation, their instinct to obey pack hierarchy. The kid, though, was free game in their minds.

Charlie took a step forward at Blue’s small growl, testing the water. Testing Derek.

“ _Stand down_ , Charlie. I see you!” Charlie moved an inch back. A good sign. “ _Blue_!”

Blue met his eyes levelly, and he could see her deciding if she wanted to challenge him for alpha. If she wanted to kill him.

“Close the gate,” Derek snapped to Scott.

“Close it? You’re in it!”

“Just close it.” He could hear the metal grinding as Scott obeyed. To the raptors he said, “That’s it, girls. Good girls. Easy. Easy.”

Blue knew the minute he was about to leap, scented his fear, and lunged for him. Derek rolled back, barely missed being caught in raptor jaws, and landed hard on his shoulder just as the gate slammed closed behind him. He could hear Blue breathing, growling, just behind him, but didn’t turn back until there was no fear in his eyes. Blue had to know she hadn’t shaken him—even though she had.

Disinterested now that the hunt was over, Blue turned away from him.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Derek said to the kid, curled up and pale against the metal bars. At the kid’s affirmative nod, he said, “Why do you think there was an opening? Never turn your back on the raptors.”

The kid spun, eyes bugged wide, as Echo bared her teeth at him, claws curled over the lowest bare, snoot pressed as far through the bars as she could make it.

Derek’s heart pounded so loudly in his chest he thought it would punch straight through his sternum, but he was steady when he walked away. The raptors watched him.

He didn’t spare a backwards glance at Peter.

 

 

 

So the thing about kids—they got taller.

“Wow,” Lydia said. She was, in a nice way to put it, horizontally challenged. Her half-brothers apparently got their genes from their dad’s side. Holt towered over her. “Holt. Wow. You—the last time I saw you were—” She put her hand chest level to demonstrate. “—that had to be like what? Three? Four years—”

“Seven,” Holt said, “actually, but who’s counting.”

He was clearly. Lydia comforted herself with the fact that he was… _teenaged_ age and probably didn’t like anything anyway. Max still only came up to Lydia’s shoulder, a mopey-haired kid with the unfortunate Martin ginger coloring.

“Can we go see the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Lydia? Is it really 20 feet tall? Does it really eat fifty pounds of raw meat in a single day? Did you know that a Tyrannosaurs-Rex has sixty teeth, up to 9 inches long, that can crush the bones of its prey like a—?”

“Whoa. Slow down. I can barely keep up.” Well, she could actually. And knew all that already, but she saw what mother had meant when she’s said _Max is almost as smart as you!_ “We’ll definitely hit the T-Rex Kingdom, I promise.”

Max hooted, ad tugged wrist in excitement. Even Holt seemed to emerge from him nihilist-teenage shell.

“But first,” she held back her wince when Max’s smile fell, “I’ve got a little thing to take care of. So I wanted to give you these wrists bands—VIP ones; no lines for you guys!” She tried to put as much pep in her words as she could, all the while trying to remember what sort of allergies Max had.

Max definitely had some.

Shit, maybe it was Holt.

“You’re not coming with us?” There was a lot of childlike heartbreak in Max’s words.

“Oh. Ah. No, sweetie, not today. I’ve got really important work to get to.” Max shoulders slumped and Lydia conceded herself to panic. “But tomorrow— _tomorrow_ I’m all yours. We’ll even go into the lab. See where I work. How ‘bout that?”

Holt nudged his brother. “C’mon, Max. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Max shuffled his feet.

“Now, I’ve got a park ranger who’s going to more than happy to take you around,” she’d bribed Malia with free starbucks for a week. “So she’ll meet you—”

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Holt said, all haughty, adult derision. “I can look after Max. I always do.”

“Are you sure?” She didn’t want to ask if he was old enough to look after his younger brother—he was high school age. That was definitely old enough, right?

“Yeah, he wouldn’t have fun with a stranger.” Lydia was sure the emphasis on stranger was done on purpose—and could be translated into _some big sister you are._ Holt reached for his brother’s hand. “Let’s go, Max.”

Lydia rubbed her temples as her two brothers disappeared into the crowd. She’d have to sort that out later, really make an effort. But for right now, she had one last level of hell to travel through.

Good thing she already had the pounding headache.

 

 

 

Derek’s bungalow sat at the very edge of the safe zone, just before the beach, away from most of the others. That was how he preferred it. For the most part, he was a solitary creature. Had been since he’d lost most of his family members to a house fire.

It always had the added perk of always being able to tell when someone approached the bungalow, though he didn’t bother to glance up from the motorcycle he was working on.

Derek swore he could smell her the minute she opened her door—a perfume of hothouse flowers—and gritted his teeth. The single most annoying woman he’d ever met would smell the nicest.

“Mr. Hale,” Lydia Martin said, looking impeccably put together, especially standing next to his ramshackle bungalow. Her skirt shifted against her knees, her heels not even sinking into the ground. “I tried to radio you—”

“Have it turned off,” Derek pointed out, stuffing a greasy handkerchief into his back pocket, and stood. “I’m off duty for the evening.”

“Yes. Well. You’re on-duty as of right now.” Lydia Martin always spoke like a woman who was used to snapping her fingers and getting her way, being in command and being unquestioned. An alpha’s instincts. It rubbed right up against Derek’s own.

_Spending too much damn time around animals._

Her little nose crinkled is disdain as she eyes his outfit—he hadn’t changed since he’d left the raptor enclosure and had added several oil stains to all the dirt and grass marks.

“You don’t write my paycheck, _Miss_ Martin.” He barely resisted adding a thank God to the end of the sentence.

“It’s from Mr. Masrani himself. If you actually read your emails instead of deleting them you’d know that.”

God, had he actually once thought about asking this woman out on a _date_? The first time he’d seen her when he’d come up to the lab—Masrani had insisted. _See how we’re making your pack_ , he’d said—she had been a compact, neat little package of red hair, big eyes, and soft lips. He’d thought _why the hell not?_ He hadn’t dated anyone since Jennifer, raw from that particular breakup.

But then she looked him square in the eyes and had said, in obvious disbelief, _“This is the man who’s going to be taking care of my raptors?”_

“Don’t you mean my raptors?” __

And that had been, simply, that. The handful of times they had interacted since then had not been pleasant, descending into little more than name-calling. Two top predators trying to draw blood.

“The new asset’s exhibit is going to be opening in three weeks and Mr. Masrani wants you to monitor it in its natural—”

“Natural?” Derek snorted. “The genetic hodgepodge you cooked up in the lab? Nothing about it is _natural_.”

“— _habitat_ ,” Lydia went on, jaw muscles locked, “give a report on its predator instincts, its thinking capabilities. You work with the raptors, our most intelligent breed.”

“You think it’s smarter than the velociraptors?” Well that sounded like a bad idea. “What the hell is it made of?”

“I didn’t work on this asset—it was specifically Dr. Wu’s project. And we don’t _know_ it’s intelligence level. We’re hoping your work with the raptors will give us insight.”

“Insight. To a genetically modified animal.”

“If you’re going to be unhelpful—”

“According to you I’m always unhelpful.”

“You _are_ ,” Lydia said, lips puckered, hands on her hips. “But Mr. Masrani assures me you do good work with my raptors—”

“—my raptors.”

“And he is my boss. And yours. So. Get. In. The. Damn. Car.”

She was so bossy, Derek thought. How was she just a lab geek and not leading armies into battle? He imagined putting his teeth to her throat—just _because._

When he approached Lydia lifted a hand. “First, change your shirt.” She drew a finger through the air, down the length of his chest. “We do know it is sensitive to smell.”

 

 

 

The Indominus Rex’s enclosure was oddly silent when Lydia entered the glass viewing room. Too quiet. The hairs on her arms rose in alarm, a shiver raced down her spine. Derek’s presence just behind her was warm, solid, and steady—but she definitely didn’t find that a comfort.

“So you’ve never seen this thing before?”

“I have seen it before,” she shot back. “When it was in the lab, but I didn’t work on it. Dr. Wu was the only one with clearance.”

Derek rounded her side, approaching the glass. He _had_ changed, into a v-neck and hunting vest, strapped a knife into a holster at the small of his back, and loaded up a gun into her car. Lydia had almost snapped _we’re not charging into battle_ but had reminded herself that she was a professional.

He planted his hands on his hips, eyes glued to the enclosure. She couldn’t help but picture a predator, taking careful stock of its surroundings, ferretting out threats. Ridiculous, even if Derek Hale acted more animal than human most days— _who wears_ jeans _to a job interview?_

“What were your observations when it was in the lab?”

“It wasn’t in there very long,” Lydia said. “It was designed to grow exponentially. Within a week of hatching it was moved into this paddock.”

“You mean it’s been in here its _whole_ life? By itself?”

“It had a sister… but…”

“But?”

“She ate it.” She hadn’t been the one to find the remains, but she’d seen the bloody aftermath, heard the dinosaur shrieking in the next room.

Derek’s head swiveled around and pinned Lydia in place. Only through sheer willpower did she not squirm under his narrowed gaze. “It _ate_ its sister. Most dinosaurs are pack animals—if it ate a pack-mate and now… living by itself, with no outside interaction other than a feeding crane…”

“I’m not the one who needs the report, Mr. Hale,” Lydia snapped. “Write all this down and email it to Mr. Masrani.”

She spun on her heel, hating that he always made her feel like her skin was too tight over her bones. Men were easy for Lydia—she managed them deftly, even if she hadn’t had a decent boyfriend in five years—and she hated that Derek Hale would not be managed. As one of the head scientists under Dr. Wu she should outrank him. He never acted like she did.

“Turn on the thermal scan,” she said to the security guard munching on a sandwich. “Where the hell is it?”

She’d never been to this enclosure before, but she’d heard from Allison that the dinosaur was very interested in what went on beyond its large living space. The first month it had been moved here, she’d learned quickly where her food would be coming from and had tried to bite off a handler’s arm.

There was a spider-web fissure in the glass just in front of Lydia from where the dinosaur had rammed its head.

 _Dangerous_ , she had thought and could admit, at least privately, she had never supported genetically designed dinosaurs.

“This—this is…” the security guard stared in wide-eyed horror at his monitors. “It’s not possible—thermal reading’s not picking anything up?”

“That’s not possible!” Lydia snapped. “Is the machine defective?”

“Have those claw marks always been there?” Derek asked quietly from the corner.

Lydia spun, and rushed over to him. She saw what had grabbed his interest. The thick, cement walls encasing the enclosure were scared, _riddled_ , with ragged, white lines. Claw marks.

And they went up—and up—and up.

“Oh my God,” Lydia whispered in horror, mind already flashing with dim memories from her childhood of news reports—death on Isla Nebular, lethal T-Rex lose in New York. Dr. Ian Malcolm on Larry King saying _nature selected these creatures for extinction so we, humans, could live. To bring them back—it challenges nature. And nature gets angry._

Dr. Alan Grant when Jurassic World had opened— _John Hammond thought he could play God. Simon Masrani thinks he can play a better God. There is a long history of what happened to men of that caliber._

Derek turns, hands landed hard on Lydia’s shoulders. “The animals all have trackers, right?”

Her head bobbed, but her eyes were fastened on the wall. It had clawed its way out, could even now be stalking its way to the park residents… why was there an extra flutter of panic at that thought?

“Lydia.”

“Y—yes. Yes, trackers. They do. I can—I’ll call control. I’ll have them activate it. I’ll—”

“Get your cute ass over there,” Derek finished for her. Lydia’s spine snapped straight at his words, and the panic that drilled a hole into her ribs eased to make room for her anger. “Cell phone reception isn’t the best out here, you need to get down to control. _Make_ them listen to you. You’re good at making people.”

“Right.” She glanced at his hands. “Let me go.”

“Yeah.” Derek’s hands fell away. “I’m going to radio security and some handlers. Get them over here.”

Lydia made a beeline for the exit, cellphone clenched tightly in one hand as she punched in the emergency number to the control room. She hit the gravel outside Indominus Rex’s enclosure in a dead run.

“Get me control,” she thundered into phone.

“You got control,” a man said on the other line. There was popping sound and— _was he chewing gum!?_

“Who the hell is this?”

“Stiles Stilinski. Who the _hell_ is this?”

Stilinski? That didn’t ring a bell. There were hundreds of park operators in that control room, but only a few would be able to activate any sort of defensive measures. She needed someone with clearance.

“No. No. Go directly to the top. This is Lydia Martin, I’m at the Indominus Rex enclosure. We have an asset out of containment. Do you hear me?”

“Um. Yeah. Ah. Sorry,” Stilinski said. “Can you—ah—repeat that one? It sounded like you said—” 

_“We have an asset out of containment!”_

 

 

 

Every nerve ending in Derek screamed in warning as he and security guard—Paul, his name tag read—stepped into the empty enclosure. Thankfully, though, his heart had evened out into a steadier beat now that he knew Lydia was moving away from the potential danger.

When he realized what was happening—the animal loose, Lydia ripe and ready for the feast—everything instinct had been yanked forward. Animal instincts, his sharpened and honed like a blade, had demanded he throw her over his shoulder and get her out of danger as quickly as possible. He’d just barely been able to reign himself in.

A maintenance worker was already at the wall, running his fingers over the scarred cement. The air was oppressive with thick, dense foliage, but silent. Not even cicadas hummed a low tone.

_Something’s wrong._

“How did it manage to climb the entire wall?” Paul wanted to know, head tipped back far on his shoulders so he could see top. “It’s big but not _that_ big.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve had shifts here since she was put in the enclosure,” Paul said. “Never liked her. Sort of looked at you, measured you, like she was wondering how you were going to taste.”

 _Wonderful_ , Derek thought. He made a mental note to let JWS—Jurassic World Science—know what he thought about their attraction policies. 

Radio static crackled from the small radio on Paul’s shoulder. “What was that?” he said into the speaker. “Didn’t catch it, over.”

“Thermal—the tracker is—you need—” Static devoured every other word coming out of the radio, but something about the woman’s voice on the other end made the muscles in Derek’s body shift into running mode. “—with _you_!”

“What? You keep breaking up.”

“ _—in there with you!_ ”

The trees shifted, leafs rustled like old paper, and Derek hissed, “ _Run_!”

He and the maintenance worked bolted toward the door to the viewing room while heavier-set Paul lagged behind.

The ground beneath Derek’s feet tembled, like a miniature earthquake. _Oh fuck_ —

He twisted his hips, slid on the ground, and managed to turn himself a complete one 180. A tree snapped beneath an impossible weight and the maintenance worker, not as quick on his toes as Derek, screamed behind him. He was abruptly silenced by the sound of crunching bones.

_Don’t think about it—Jesus, move._

Paul had managed to open the emergency access door and squeezed his way to freedom. Just as his leg cleared the threshold it began to slide closed behind him.

_They were shutting him in!_

If he wasn’t running hell-bent for his life he might understand the decision—one life measured against twenty some odd thousand wasn’t hard math—but at the moment he wasn’t feeling particularly pragmatic.

_Forget yelling at JWS. I’m going to punch everyone in that control room._

He turned mid-stride and managed to clear the closing door. Steel and stone whined behind him, shattered, and the Indominus Rex broke free of its cage, roaring with rage and hunger.

Derek slid into the gravel like he was sliding into home plate, and rolled beneath a truck. His lungs burned from his run and the sensation of pure panic, but he forced his breath to come out silent as he stared up into the underbelly of the car.

The ground shook beneath his back as the animal contemplated his freedom.

From the corner of his eyes, Derek could see Paul pressed up against the fender of another car, knees curled to his chest. He whimpered quietly even as Derek lifted a finger to his lips—the quick glance he’d gotten of the beast had shown him a T-Rex shaped dinosaur. Hopefully, it had the vision of one.

Paul’s car shifted to the right, bumped hard into Paul. Paul turned his terrified gaze to Derek as something massive moved behind him, and long, clawed arms shift into view.

With a hard swing of its tail Indominus Rex batted away the car as if it was weighed nothing. Paul reached for the cross that dangled from his neck just as jaws clamped down around him, his entire body caged in lethal teeth.

 _Crunch_. Fat droplets of blood splattered on the gravel.

Derek pulled his knife from its sheath at the small of his neck, severed the car’s gasoline, and doused himself in the thick smell of fuel. He wasn’t even thinking, not really, everything movement jerky and ungraceful, desperation making him clumsy.

Teeth on the periphery—

He stilled, every muscle tensed and coiled, as Indominus Rex bent beside his trust. He could see it inhaled, nostrils flared.

 _It remembers that there were two of us_ , Derek realized.

It nudged the car with its snoot, the machine rocking, but Derek grinded his teeth and refused to move. Another test. Trying to see if it could spook him out, like any good hunting animal.

With a roar it thundered passed Derek’s position. He could hear wood give way as it beelined into the woods.

Derek wasn’t sure how long he laid beneath the car and tried to force air back into his lungs. Nausea rolled hot in his stomach, his mind rapidly the memories of screams and blood, imagined what Paul’s mangled corpse would look like.

He pivoted to his side, afraid he was going to vomit, but the stubbornness of his stomach prevailed.

When he finally crawled out from under the car he shook like he’d run miles, and he gave himself a minute—two—to stare at the ground and gulp in air.

Then he pulled himself up and climbed into the truck.

 

 

 

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I need to see some form of identification—”

 _Shit._ Where was Lydia’s badge? Had it fallen off into her haste to climb out of the car? There was no time to double back.

She stared down at the security officer from the bridge of her nose. “My form of identification is go fuck yourself. I need to speak to Simon Masrani and Kira Yukimura—”

“It’s alright,” she heard Misrani say, “Miss Martin has clearance.”

No. She didn’t, but she sent the security officer an _I told you so_ look and stomped into the control room. People rushing all around her, speaking rapidly into radios, but Simon Misrani stood still in the center, eyes locked onto the screen in front of him.

 _22856 live count_ , read the monitor, each park guest a little red blip on Jurassic World’s computer-generated map. Far above them, but not far enough, another red dot moved through the restricted zones.

“What happened?” Kira Yukimura wanted to know. Despite her title as Head of Park Operations her voice was soft, comforting. Misrani had brought her on less than a year ago, looking for an increased _interpersonal relationship with the park, guests, and assets._

“The thermal readings didn’t pick it up! It didn’t read that it was in the enclosure.”

“Could it have been a malfunction?” Kira asked Simon. “Some interference with the scan?”

“No,” Lydia whispered. “You need to find out what Dr. Wu spliced the asset with. Some reptiles can cloak their body heat.”

“ACU team prepping,” said a man to Kira’s right. Lydia recognized his voice as Stiles Stilinski. Little dinosaur figurines lined his workspace, and when he swiveled in his chair Lydia saw he wore one of those old Jurassic Park tee shirts.

_Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it?_

“Derek—Derek Hale was with me in the enclosure.” She sucked in a breath. The very thought made nerves pound at the base of her neck. “Is he—”

“Miss Martin, please sit.” Masrani all but shoved Stiles from his seat.

“Hey!”

She collapsed limply into the vacated chair, trying to compartmentalize, trying not to think about twenty-two years ago when all this had happened before. All the people who had gotten hurt, the people who had gotten _killed oh God—_

There was a buzz of activity around Lydia but it all felt like it happened from very far away. Stilinski rolled her chair a little to the side so he could tap rapid commands on his keyboard, Kira and Masrani argued hotly behind about—about—ACU clearance.

“Can you get in contact with Miss Argent? I want her back on the island.” Masrani.

“I’m closing everything down below the first north marker,” Kira decided. “Bring every onto the Main Street. Stiles—Real World Phase One.”

Stilinski scooped up his headseat from the console. “We have a Real World Phase One. Repeat Real World Phase One—this is not a drill. All rides are to be shut down until further notice. No one behind the first north marker.”

“ACU in position,” Kira said.

Lydia focused on her nails, a calming exercise, and folded her fingers together. She could feel the pulse in her wrist, _thud-thud-thud_.

“What the hell happened out there!?”

Lydia burst to her feet like someone had lit a fire under her, eyes latched onto Derek as he strode angrily into the room. He looked about ready to hit someone. Stilinski plopped back into his seat with a fluid slide.

In a world of suits and corporate orders, Stilinski’s downright offensive Jurassic Park tee, Derek Hale looked capable, in command, looked like he knew what he was doing.

“Mr. Hale,” Kira said, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“The other two poor bastards I was with weren’t so lucky.”

Lydia’s stomach rolled. She had never been good with blood. She liked sterile, neat things, everything with a proper place and everything in it.

“ACU are closing in on target,” Stilinski reported, superimposing the ACU crew’s heart monitors and attached cams onto the massive monitor in the front.

“They’re free to engage,” Masrani said.

“They’re not using lethal rounds?” Derek snapped. Lydia watched his hand curl into a fist. She felt numb. “That thing has killed two people already—”

“That is twenty-six million dollars’ worth of investment, Mr. Hale. We don’t want to lose the asset if we can.”

“How about twenty six hundred people? You want to lose them?” Derek demanded, voice rough and raspy. He must have raced from the Indominus enclosure. “That thing out there? That thing you made? She’s seeing all this for the first time—she’s trying to figure out where she stands in food chain. And trust me you don’t want her to.”

The silence in the room was heavy.

“ACU has authorization to use lethal rounds in emergency situations. This is a _goddamn emergency_. Evacuate the park, load up a helicopter, and smoke the bastard!”

“We’ll never reopen…” Kira said softly.

“I will not open the park to that kind of scrutiny,” Masrani snapped. “This park has always operated with the stipulation that we were capable of handling a breach in containment. This was an eventuality.”

“Might want to put that in the brochure,” Stiles muttered beside Lydia. “Bring the whole family!—but _eventually_ someone is going to be dino-lunch.”

Derek was definitely going to hit someone, Lydia realized, and it was going to be Mr. Masrani. She jammed the back of her heels on the ground, the loud snap bringing attention to her.

“Mr. Hale!” she snapped, saving the idiot from making a career-destroying mistake. “We’re trying to recover a valuable piece of scientific innovation. If you don’t have helpful advice to offer than you can leave.”

Kira Yukimura chewed her lip, looking more in Derek’s shoot-to-kill camp but unwilling to go over Masrani’s head.

Derek glared at her, the muscle in his jaw ticking but he was backing down. He leaned toward Misarani. “I’d have a talk with your scientist,” he said lowly, “that was no dinosaur.”

Masrani’s face darkened at the implication, but said nothing as Derek turned and strode out of the room.

Lydia turned back to the camera. The ACU unit was only three miles out of the tracker’s location now and she was glad Allison was gone, was safe. Because she was with Derek Hale, as much as she hated to admit. She wished the unit was using lethal rounds.

 _Twenty-two million_ , said the live count.

 _Two._ Lydia’s heart thundered up her throat, and she gagged. _Two. Oh shit._

She fished her phone out of her skirt’s pocket. Her fingers shook as she punched in Holt’s number and stepped into a shadowed corner of the room. Everyone was more interested in the unit’s approach.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” she muttered. The other line clicked. “Oh thank God! Holt? Holt, where are you and—”

“—Lydia—?” Holt’s voice was interjected with loud crackles of static. “Can’t—barely—hear—hamster bowl thing—”

“No. No. Holt. _Holt_ , listen to me. You need to take Max and go back to the hotel. Right now. Holt, can you hear me? Holt!” The line was already dead.

_Hamster bowl—oh fuck. The gyrosphere._

She raced back over the console that Stilinski monitored. She closed a hand tightly around his shoulder and leaned heavily over him. “Stilisnki—”

“Stiles. No one calls me—”

“Are all the gyrospheres accounted for?”

Stiles snorted. “What? Of course. I pulled them all in. I do know how to do my job—oh, wait. No. One’s still out there.” On his console Stiles pointed to the lone red marker out in the field, moving at a steady pace _away_ from its docking point.

Lydia rocked back on her heels. Oh God. Holt and Max were still out there, and their gyrosphere was moving closer and closer to the edge of the restricted zone—and closer to Indominus Rex. And ACU wouldn’t be able to get them, all hands dedicated to the retrieval of the asset.

A camera feed to her right showed Derek Hale arguing with another security office. He wasn’t exactly shouting to the rooftops that a dinosaur was loose, but he was making a clear point that something was wrong, hands lifted and voice raised.

“Derek,” Lydia breathed, idea sparking. She raced by Kira and Masrani and all but dived into the elevator.

The screaming started just as the doors slid closed.


	2. on the shoulders of geniuses

“Derek!”

He’d been halfway out of the guest center—he’d radioed Scott, who’d informed him they pulled most of their ACU crew out of the raptor enclosure to deal with Real World Phase One—when he’d heard his name.

When he’d left Lydia Martin in the control room she looked white as a sheet—even when she’d been ripping him a new one—but now she’d seemed to have pulled herself together. Or, at least, she’d gotten her spine firmly back into place.

She pushed her way through the slightly panicked crowd to reach him. A slim hand closed tightly around his wrist. “I need you,” she said.

Wow, so. Calm down heart.

“My brothers,” she went on in a breathless rush, “are out—gyrosphere. Close to the restricted zone. Please—I need to go get them.”

Okay. Well, he hadn’t imagined she had brothers—in fact, he hadn’t imagined much in the way of Lydia Martin other than, maybe, what color her underwear was or how soft her skin would be to the touch—but, of course. She had brothers.

“Alright. We’ll take a jeep out and go get them,” he said. “How old are they? What do they look like?”

“There’s—ah—Holt—he’s—he’s like this tall?” She lifted a hand several inches above her own head. “Ah—high school age? And there’s Max who is… younger… ten? El—elven?”

“You don’t know how old your brothers are?”

“Can we just go!?”

 

 

 

The drive down toward the restricted zone was a series of bumps and potholes. Lydia gripped her seatbelt, reminding herself that Derek did know how to drive and that Holt and Max would be _fine_. The ACU team would corral that Indominus back into its cage and then—

“So your brothers—” Derek began.

“Half-brothers.”

“Ah.”

She pinned him with a glare. “What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. It just means ah.”

“People just don’t say ‘ah’ to say ah. People say ‘ah’ to excuse themselves from making a negative comment—even though that’s what they’re still thinking.”

Derek glanced over at her. “God, are you _always_ like this?”

“There’s over a decade between me and Holt. They were babies when I was practically an adult…” And she’d been the one spending six months out of the year in another house, with a different family. “It makes it tough.”

“Ah.”

She huffed. “Now you’re just doing that to annoy me.”

A ghost of a smile touched Derek’s lips and it was odd—the world was about to fall apart, and she was smiling back at Derek Hale.

“Maybe a little.”

“Will you just focus on—hmph!”

Derek slammed on the breaks and Lydia as thrown forward, her seatbelt cutting off her oxygen. She came up for air sputtering, ready to sink her nails into Derek’s face for his prank, but he wasn’t even looking at her.

“Stay in the car,” he said, and reached for the gun in the backseat.

Lydia was already scrambling out the passengers door. She ignored Derek’s annoyed “do you ever listen?” and joined him on a cautious approached toward the small valley in front of them. It became immediately apparent what had caught his attention.

The apatosaur lay on its side, body riddled with long, jagged gashes. Thick blood clotted along its wounds as it wheezed out dying breaths. She didn’t even react as Lydia and Derek approached, eyes glazed over with pain, and Lydia thought she saw sadness in that beady gaze.

“Shhh,” Derek said, crouched beside her, hand laid on the top of her head. “Easy, girl. Easy.”

There was nothing they could do for her. Even Lydia could see that. Gashes were slashed deep into the underside of her rounded belly, the grass beneath her dyed a dark rust.

Lydia knelt beside the dinosaur, stroked a hand down her long, elegant neck. For a moment the apatosaur struggled to climb to her feet, but stilled at Derek’s soothing words. Her chin bobbed, landed heavily on Lydia’s knees as she released another wheezing, pained breath.

She didn’t realize that was she was crying until she had to blink to clear her filmy vision. She could feel the trembling throat beneath her, the pain radiating off this beautiful body. She didn’t care that Derek watched her quietly, saw the tears that splashed across her cheeks.

“You forget…” she managed thickly, “you forget that they’re not just cells in a test tube being nudged into mitosis. But then—then you remember.”

She could feel the apatosaur pulse beneath her hand, the beat more sluggish with each second. Those dark eyes were stared at her, pleaded with her to end the pain.

“It’s alright, girl,” Lydia said softly. “It’s alright.”

Derek laid his hands over hers and they waited for the heartbeat to slow and slow and stop.

Lydia remained kneeling beside the dead dinosaur in silent vigil as Derek stood and moved into the valley. Lydia stroked the poor animal’s head one last time and stood as well.

In the valley below three more apatosaurus lay dead in the tall grass, bodies battered with claw and teeth marks.

“It didn’t…” Lydia whispered, as if afraid to the disturbed the dead. A breeze blew thick, ginger curls into her face. “It didn’t eat any of them, did it?”

“No,” Derek said. “It’s not _hunting_. Not for food. This is just killing—for the pleasure of it.”

She knew what Derek meant. Even velociraptors, who kept their pray alive when they began to feast, killed with the intention to eat, to survive. This was… almost sadistic. This was a creature that would eat a strong packmate for no reason.

“Let’s find your brothers,” Derek said.

 

 

 

They found the destroyed gyrosphere just beyond the restructured zone, not far from a dead ankylosaurus, Jimmy Fallon’s spiel about safety faded in and out as the vehicle short-circuited.

“Wait, damnit.” Derek grasped for Lydia and just missed her as she leapt out of the car, all but flying across the ground. How she managed to stay up right, let along run, in those tittering heels was beyond him. “ _Lydia_.”

“Oh no.” Lydia’s voice was whisper-soft. She bent down beside the gyrosphere and reached for something inside the destroyed haul. A smashed cellphone. “Oh no.” She stood. “ _Holt! Max!_ ”

He knew he should really shut her up. Whatever had destroyed the gyrosphere—oh who was he kidding? He knew exactly what had destroyed the gyrosphere, and Lydia did too—could still be nearby, but he was more interested in working a claw stuck in the glass out with his knife. It was as big as T-Rex’s claw, but bone-white, curved.

Something about seemed… so familiar.

“ _Holt! Max!_ ”

“Lydia, look.” Derek pointed to two sets of prints in the soft, wet earth. “They made it out.”

Lydia’s face went through a gambit of emotions—shock, disbelief, relief, hope, and joy—an explosion of expressions that Derek found himself oddly riveted to. He followed the set of footprints, one only a size or two smaller than his, the other a child’s. Lydia nipped right on his heels, all but vibrating with the need to find her brothers.

The tracks ended abruptly at a sheer drop into a lagoon below. Derek crouched beside the last set of prints. They were smeared. The boys had skidded to a halt and then pushed back. To jump.

“The water. They jumped into the water,” Lydia said.

“Smart kids.” With a quite a bit of respect he added, “Brave kids.”

“ _Max! Holt!_ ”

Derek jerked upward and slapped a hand over Lydia’s mouth, the other cupped the back of her head. Lydia’s answer was to jam the point of her heel into his boot. It didn’t hurt, but she made her point.

He kept his hand in place and leaned close enough for their noses to almost touch. “Your brothers are safe, and alive. But we will not be if we draw attention to ourselves. Okay?”

Her eyes narrowed in indignation about being ordered around, but she was a smart cookie—and nodded.

“Okay,” she said when he pulled his hand away. “Okay. So you can track them, right? Pick up their scent or whatever?”

“I’m not a fucking werewolf,” Derek ground out. “But yes. I can follow them. I want you to head back to control, tell them that this thing has been killing dinosaurs outside the restricted zone and—”

“Oh no. Hell no. You do _not_ get to tell me to go home. They’re my brothers. I’m going with you.”

“This isn’t a lab, princess,” Derek said. “You won’t last two minutes in there, _certainly_ not in those ridiculous shoes.”

Lydia huffed, but instead of railing him with a counterargument she simply yanked her blouse from the waistline of her skirt. But the time Derek’s brain had reengaged, he realized she wasn’t stripping—for him. She popped the buttons off her wrist, folded her sleeves to her elbows, and tied the tail end of her open blouse over her navel.

She planted her hands on her hips and looked at him expectantly.

A bead of sweat rolled down her chin to the teasing hollow of her breasts above the neckline of her tank top.

“Ah.” _Focus, damnit._ “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m ready to go with you.”

“Uh-huh.” His eyes moved from the top of her head down to her feet, for the first time truly comprehending how small she was. His eyes fixated on a spot just to the left of her ridiculous heels. “Alright. You can come with me—”

“I wasn’t asking for permission—”

“But you _need_ to do what I say,” he snapped over her. “This is a prehistoric jungle with predators as big as houses. We are not at the top of the food chain out there. We’re somewhere near the bottom and if you don’t want to end up a main course you need to do exactly what I say, when I say it.”

Lydia pursed her lips, clearly not liking that particular ultimatum. He had to admit, that was a bit of a turn on. Made all those animal instincts that lurked in the ego clamor to conquer that will. _Shut up, dick._

“Fine. Fine!” Lydia did an adorable stomp with her left foot. “Can we go now?”

He motioned toward the lagoon with his gun arm. “After you, princess.”

She brushed passed him with a huff, confident on those damn hells, and Derek glanced back down.

It was probably for the best she had come along. If he had let Lydia go back to the jeep alone she might have run into the very thing he was trying to keep her safe from.

Because she hadn’t noticed, but at her feet, almost as big as she was, was a footprint belonging to Indominus Rex.

 

 

 

Lydia had never been here before, but she recognized it from old pictures. The stone steps, the fossils carved into the arched doors.

 _Jurassic Park_. The original—if doctors Malcolm and Grant were to be believed—mistake. Foliage had reclaimed the building, looped up the walls and the columns, old dinosaur bones literally covered the floor. It looked like a momentum to an ancient culture.

She ran fingers over the mural of a velociraptor, surprised but how lifelike it was. She never interacted with the animals, not even the raptors—who’s DNA splicing she was chiefly responsible for. From behind the safety a glass wall she had watched them push their way out of membrane and shell, had watched Derek lift each raptor free, the first touch they experienced, so they would imprint on him. Everything she did was distant, divorced. She didn’t watch them grow, didn’t watch them hunt, existed permanently outside of their pack dynamic.

 _You need to get out more_ , Allison was always telling her, _you need to engage._

An engine roared in the distance. Lydia jerked her head around toward Derek. “Garage!”

They cleared the threshold just as the old jeep peeled out. Lydia’s voice was lost beneath the roar of the engine as she screamed for her brothers. By the time she reached the garage exit the car was already barreling through the trees.

“They can fix up cars?” Derek said. He propped his gun up against the second jeep’s door and leaned over its open hood.

“I taught them how,” Lydia said with a dismissive wave. “Went through a phase in college.”

“You. Went through. A phase?”

“Yes.”

“A car fixing phase?”

“Try not to sound so surprised. I’m not all microscopes and Louis Vuitton.” She remembered tinkering around with her stepfather’s car, an eleven year old Holt handing her wretches and screwdrivers as she asked for them. She hadn’t realized that Holt had paid attention, hadn’t realized he’d passed those lessons onto Max.

“Well, looks like they might get back to the park without us,” Derek said. “We should back to the jeep and—”

_Thud!_

Derek leapt at her, swung her around and planted her so roughly behind the front of the remaining jeep that air rushed from her lungs in a pained burst. Her fingers instinctively latched onto his belt, curled into a tight fist, as he laid his arm flat against her chest, pushed her tight into the car.

The ground shook in time with the pound of footsteps, and Lydia’s heart fluttered like a trapped hummingbird against her ribs.

Through a section of the wall that had given way to the years, Lydia watched the languid of the Indominus. Its scales rippled and gleamed, green from the sunlight through the trees, massive muscles bunch with each powerful step. She could hear its snorts, its inhales, as it sniffed out its prey, hunted for them.

She remembered that poor apatosaur and squeezed her eyes shut, head turned away from the wall. Derek’s arm was a powerful steel band across her breasts, the only thing that kept her steady, the only thing that kept her calm.

The jeep’s steel frame whined as something nudged it, and she heard another snort from the Indominus. _Oh, God. Please go away. Please go. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease—_

Silence. For a moment neither she nor Derek dared to move, dared to breath. She opened her eyes and glanced at him, found him looking at her. He nodded and leaned over the side of the car, reaching for the gun he’d left propped up against the door.

Derek touch her shoulder, motioned toward the door to their left. She shifted to run for it.

Their only warning a piercing bellow of rage. 

The jeep was thrown sideways and Derek shoved her roughly forward. Lydia scrambled on hands and knees toward the door, all but lifted off her feet when Derek caught up with her and hooked an arm around her waist. They took off in a dead run as the Indominus roared behind them furiously and barreled through the wall after them.

“C’mon!” Derek’s long strides kept him ahead of her. “Move that ass, Lydia!”

Her lungs burned. She didn’t even have the energy to curse at him. With a burst of panicked adrenaline she gained on him, and then was ahead of him, vision obscured by the whip of her hair. She didn’t dare glance back over her shoulder to see if the Indominus still followed, she knew that it was, knew that it was determined to kill them, to hurt them.

She fished her phone of pocket and punched in control’s number without breaking stride. Derek caught up to her, gun thrown over her shoulder, and fisted a hand in her skirt. She stumbled to keep up.

“This is Lydia Martin!” she snapped into her phone. “I have a location on the Indominus. It’s in sector six, just outside the original visitor center.”

“We have a lock on its position,” Stilinski said from the other land. “Tracking it now. A helicopter is already in pursuit.”

“Wait?” The Indominus wasn’t chasing them anymore. There was only silence behind them, no roars, no trees being knocked over. Derek must have had a similar thought, and let go of her skirt. “Wait you mean already in pursuit? Who’s flying it?”

 

 

 

_Masrani’s in the copter._

He and Lydia raced after the helicopter as it rushed over head, the Indominus locked in its sights. He had to give to Masrani. The man had balls.

“He doesn’t have his license yet!” Lydia shouted at whoever she had on the phone. “What’s he doing flying a helicopter!”

Trying to fix a mistake. Derek didn’t need to have been in that control room to know exactly what had happened that ACU team—he’d gotten firsthand experience with that killer instinct.

He’d always respected Masrani. He was too much like old John Hammond—too rich for his own good—but he wasn’t anything like Peter Hale. He looked at the dinosaurs and saw opportunity, scientific innovation, a chance to learn and grown as people, as humanity.

John Hammond had shared that outlook, and he’d learned a hard lesson.

They followed the _rat-tat-tatting_ of the machine gun strapped to the helicopter, the roar of the Indominus as it was pelted with bullets, the sound of trees crushed beneath a massive, unforgiving body.

Lydia was a good three feet ahead of him, her speed undaunted even in those dumb heels. 

They pushed out of the dense jungle and barely missed going face first over the edge of a cliff. The Indominus roared far to their left, hounded by the helicopter, and leapt to the ground below. Derek and Lydia watched as it made a beeline straight to the glass dome aviary, the copter right on top of it.

“Oh, God,” Lydia said, lips parted. Her face was streaked with mud, her pretty skirt stained in big, blotched circles, perfectly maintained hair tangled and knotted. In another situation Derek might have been amused to see her so unkempt, might have even been turned on.

But all he could do was watch with the same opened mouth horror as the Indominus barreled into the aviary, jagged pieces of glass raining around it infracted light.

It took less than a minute for all hell to break lose, but time seemed to slow to a crawl for Derek. He watched the copter fire round after round into the destroyed aviary, trying to bring the beast down, and then watched as the Dimorphodons and Pterosaurs took flight in one massive wave of movement.

They crashed into the helicopter, more panicked than hostile, desperate to escape the predator in their midst. The helicopter jerked in midair as Masrani struggled to control it beneath the attack. Derek could make out the small form of a trooper as he was plucked right from his seat, clamped tightly between a Pterosaur’s beak.

Another crashed through the copter’s windshield with a piercing shriek and the copter finally went down. Glass shattered, fire burst into the air in a cloud of death, dinosaurs shrieked and scrambled to escape the flames.

There was no chance for Masrani.

“Oh God,” Lydia whispered, and turned her head into Derek’s shoulder.

Smoke and fire billowed up from the shattered dome and the Indominus roared away from the wreckage, a Dimophodon clutched in one claw.

Alive. And barely wounded from the look of it.

“Jesus,” Derek muttered. This thing was unstoppable.

There was no time to mourn Masrani. The Indominus hadn’t been stopped, and with Masrani gone Jurassic World had lost its top most executive officer. There were Kira Yukimura, the head of P.O., but Derek knew that everyone was going to look for someone more militarized, that promised strength and firepower.

He had a feeling where they were going to get it from. _Shit_.

Lydia pulled away from his shoulder. “Derek!” 

She pointed to the escaped dinosaurs—now heading right toward them.

“Shit! Shit!” He grabbed Lydia shoulders and gave her a solid push back. “Back into the trees!”

“We have to get back to the park!” Lydia called over her shoulder.

“Pachycephalosaurus paddock not too far from here!” Derek shouted at her. “We can hitch a ride.”

By the time they looped back around to the paddock, the entire area was a beehive of evacuation. He didn’t seen any ACU or InGen security among the fleeing handlers, but they had likely already been called back to the resort to try to contain the Indominus.

Derek all but threw himself on the closet off-road buggy before someone else could snatch it up. Behind him, Lydia’s run slowed and then stopped, phone pressed tight to her ear.

“You found them?” she said to whoever was on the other line. “Oh thank God! Send someone out there to retrieve and get them into the control room.” She killed the call and met his eyes. “My brothers. They just reached the west gate. They’re okay.”

“We won’t be if those birds reach Main Street,” Derek pointed out. He’d never worked with the Dimorphodons or Pterosaurs of Jurassic World’s aviary, but he knew they were vicious. “Hop on.”

Lydia slid onto the buggy behind him, slender arms locked tight around his waist, and Derek zipped for the west gate entrance.

“We need to get my brothers and get back into that control room,” Lydia shouted into his ear. “We need talk to Dr. Wu, find out what the hell this thing is.”

He’d told Mr. Masrani to have a chat with Dr. Wu, and wondered if whatever Jurassic World’s head geneticist had told him was the reason why he’d flown that damn copter himself.

They hit backlot of Main Street at a breakneck speed. ACU units rushed by him, armed to the teeth, while Dimorphodons and Pterosaurs screeched from the air, the screams of fear from the parks guests a chilling choir

Lydia streaked passed him, Derek hot on her heels. His rifle slapped against back as he wove in and out of crowds, ducked under wings. A Dimorphodon snatched a woman off her feet. Derek nailed it right in its chest, and the woman hit the ground hard—but alive.

Main Street was a virtual warzone, filled with screaming guests and the flap of wigs. They were being completely swarmed, and the mass panic had made guests easy targets for hungry dinosaurs. He’d almost lost sight of Lydia in the crush of the crowd as she pushed and shoved her way toward the visitor center. God, he hoped her brothers were there.

Derek turned at the sound of an angry, birdlike shriek, and would have gotten his face clawed right off by a Pterosaur if it hadn’t been nailed with shotgun spray.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Malia Tate said, and tossed him and an assault rifle. “Scott’s being trying to radio for hours.”

“Fuck. I left my radio at the raptor enclosure.” He swung his rifle over his shoulder. The rifiel’s rapid fire would be far more effective against the birds. “What did he say?”

“Something about dear old dad,” Malia said.

“Something’s always up with Peter.” He always wondered how Malia could be Peter’s daughter. They were nothing alike, and Derek _liked Malia_ —even if she preferred to spend her time at Site B, on Isla Sorna, to study the dinosaurs in their ‘natural’ habitats.

To his right, Lydia climbed onto a bench and bowled her hands over her mouth. “ _Holt!_ ” she screamed. “ _Max!_ ”

“Round up,” Malia snapped to her team. “Shoot to kill.”

Derek fell into rank, took up a position on Malia’s left and began picking off the birds. Over his head a woman screamed in agony as a Pterosaur tossed her in the air. Derek’s first shot missed and by the time he had his second lined up she had been tossed into the Mosasaur pool.

She was a goner. _Don’t think about it_ , Derek ordered himself, _not now. Deal with it later. Compartmentalize._

“Shit!” A pterosaur landed hard on Malia, and she sprawled backwards. 

Derek turned, hit the Pterosaur right between his eyes, and Malia leapt to her feet. She looked spitting mad, not shaken, and she nodded her head in thanks.

Talons sunk into Derek’s back, driving him face first into the ground. He was too heavy for the animal to lift and it settled for simply tearing into him. He mule kicked and managed to flip himself to his back, arms crossed and braced against the Pterosaur throat. Its beak bit into the air just above his face.

 _Holy shit._ This thing was strong. He could already feel it overpowering him, and Malia’s men were too far away to help.

He couldn’t reach for his assault rifle, not without letting that beak sink right into his face. Its wings flapped wildly around him, hot puffs of air made his eyes water. Sweat rolled down his temples, the muscles in his arms burned with the weight of the dinosaur.

Its beck brushed across his cheek. Almost puncturing.

 _Whap!_ Lydia appeared in his periphery, brandishing the butt of his rifle. She hit the pterosaur on the side of its face one more time, sent it squawking off Derek, and flipped the gun to the business end.

One shot. Two shots. Three. The bird stopped moving.

For a long, long second Derek simply remained on his back, trying to understand what had just happened, trying to rationalize with himself how close to death he’d come if Lydia Martin hadn’t saved his ass.

Lydia dropped his gun with a heavy breath and held a hand out. Derek accepted it and let her pull him to his feet. His eyes were riveted to hers.

Her red hair was plastered to the sides of her face, her skin gleamed with sweat, her eyes were glazed over in fear. Her chest heaved from the run through the jungle and the adrenaline of fighting for her life. She had a scrap on her knee. Derek wasn’t sure when she had gotten it.

She was the single most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and she just had saved his life. His arm curled around her waist and pulled her toward him, the need to feel her on his skin nearly desperate.

Derek only had one conscious thought— _I’ve got to kiss her._

 

 

 

 

Derek Hale was kissing her—and the fact that this wasn’t the strangest thing to happen to her told you a lot about Lydia’s day.

She kissed him back despite the fact that—she reminded herself—she didn’t like him. Beneath all the sweat and grime his lips were soft, confident, his body brimmed with pure, masculine strength. And she got it, she really did. He was alive, and she was alive, and she had just saved his life—and all those facts honed into the need to prove to yourself how alive you were. 

His arms were powerful, thick with muscle, beneath her clutching hands. She wanted to absorb him straight into her skin, make his strength her own. Because her knees were trembling and her lungs were burning and she wanted to curl up in a little ball, put her hands over her head, and wait this out instead of doing the adult thing, like dealing with her shit.

One of his hands pressed tightly into the small of her back, kept her flush against him, the other cupped the back of her head, angling her face so he could slip his tongue inside her mouth. Lydia found it difficult to remember why she didn’t like Derek Hale—if the way he could kiss was anything to go by he’d just become her new favorite person.

“Lydia?”

Lydia pulled away with a gasp and met Holt and Max’s wide eyes. They stared at her like she had grown two heads, or had turned a velociraptor.

Embarrassment colored her cheeks a bright pink and it was ridiculous, that in the middle of all this chaos she could still get flustered by her brothers catching her kissing the living daylights out of a man, but there you were—she was so embarrassed she half wanted to melt into the ground.

She broke away from Derek and rushed towards her brothers so she could pull them into a tight, bone-crushing embrace. Max burrowed into her stomach, face pressed into her blouse. Even Holt’s arms came up and around her, clutched tightly at her. They were both shaking like leafs.

“I was so worried,” she said and stroked a hand through Max’s mopey hair. “I’ve been looking all over for you! Why didn’t you come back!?”

Max sniffled, his thin arms so tight around Lydia she thought he’d cut off her circulation. Holt lifted his head away from her shoulder, focused on a point just behind her.

“Who’s that?” Holt almost sounded like an indignant brother ready to protect his sister’s honor, even though his sister was a grown-ass woman and they were all running for their lives form dinosaurs.

“Ah… ah…” She glanced over at Derek, who met her eyes levelly. He was going to be no help. She plastered on a smile and glanced down at Max. “We work together.”

At least Derek didn’t argue that point with her. He laid a calloused hand on her elbow. “We need to get back to the control room.”

“Right.” They maneuvered their way through the crowd, Lydia’s grip on her brothers a steel trap. She was probably going to have to talk to a therapist when all this was done. She was going to have issues—issues involving her brothers not being in her sight at all times because they were being eaten by a genetically modified hybrid dinosaur.

Her phone buzzed insistently against her leg0. “Control room’s number,” she called to Derek as she slowed. “Stiles?”

“Jesus, Lydia! I’ve been calling for like—okay like minutes— _but still_ —”

“I’ve been a little preoccupied,” she snapped. “With all the dinosaurs trying to eat park guests.”

“Yeah that’s why I’m calling. The board voted and ACU is out, InGen is in.”

Someone bumped into her shoulder and jostled her. Lydia nearly flattened poor Max, but Derek braced them both, eyes locked on hers. She waved him closer.

“What about InGen?”

“With Masrani gone the company is moving into a ‘shoot with extreme prejudice’ policy. Kira’s trying to do her best to talk them down, but Peter Hale’s here and he’s… he’s talking about using the velociraptors.”

“ _My_ velociraptors?”

Derek’s eyes narrowed. _My velociraptors_ , he mouthed at her.

“He’s got this crazy plan to—like—use them to hunt the Indominus or something?”

“Hunt the Indominus? I don’t understand—what does Hale think the velociraptors can—”

“Son of a bitch!” Derek snarled and yanked the phone from Lydia’s grip. He ignored her indignant hiss. “Who the hell is—never mind. You tell Peter to stay the hell away from my raptors—”

 _My raptors_ , she mouthed at him.

“Lydia—” Max whispered in horror and tugged at her wrist.

The steel door that kept the backlot closed to the general public shuddered, as if it buckled beneath a great weight. Lydia knew exactly what was coming through that door and sucked in an alarmed breath.

“We gotta move!” Holt hissed, eyes wide.

“Derek,” Lydia snapped at him, already hustling Max and Holt toward the control room.

Derek killed the call just as the massive doors were thrown wide open and park guests scrambled to escape a hunting pterosaur. Max and Holt bolted ahead of them, Derek hand curled into her skirt and yanked her forward to compensate for her shorter strides. When Max started to lag Derek simply lifted the boy off his feet and fireman carried him.

“Move!”

They rounded a corner and found a parked jeep. Lydia bundled Max and Holt inside and buckled them before climbing over the middle console to join Derek in the front.

“Go! Go!” Max shouted in horror as Derek gunned the engine.

“Left! Look out! People on your right!” Holt leaned forward until he could grip the back of Derek’s seat and point out obstacles.

Lydia for her part braced her heels on the dashboard and clutched the door for dear life. Max joined Holt in snapping out driving suggestions as Derek maneuvered them backwards through the crowd and out of the preying range of the pterosaurs.

The jeep screeched to a halt just behind the main backlot corridor. Pterosaurs whizzed by, but ignored them.

Lydia released a breath.

“Can we stay with you?” Holt asked in a smile voice.

Lydia glanced at them over her shoulder. “Trust me, you two are never leaving my sight again.”

“No! Him!” Max all but threw himself across his seat to latch onto Derek’s shoulders. “Definitely him.”

“Definitely him,” Holy echoed.

Lydia pinned Derek with a glance, who merely shrugged and shifted gears.

“Guess we stay together,” he agreed. “Now, let’s go. I’ve got an uncle to punch.”

 

 

 

Family didn’t mean much to Peter Hale. The feeling was pretty much mutual. As far as Derek was concerned, he was better off without him.

Which was why planting his knuckles into Peter’s chin felt so damn satisfying. It was a long time coming.

“Hale, you son of a bitch!” Lydia looked surprisingly intimated for someone so short, her eyes narrowed and dark with anger. “You wanted this all along!”

“Yes,” Peter drawled, one hand pressed to his already swelling chin. Derek hoped it bruised. “I wanted the dinosaurs to eat someone. Caught me.”

“No. But you wanted an opportunity like this—to play my hand. To force me to hand over my raptors—”

“My raptors,” Lydia said.

“—so you could make your killing machines.” Derek thought about hitting him again.

“They’re already killing machines, Derek. I’m just taking advantage of what already exists.” Peter smiled, that slow, smug smile that always made Derek’s skin crawl, and hooked his thumbs in his jeans. “Now—you can suit up and help us, and then tomorrow morning hear about yourself all over the news. About how you saved lives, protected people. Or you can sit here and let other people do it. Your choice, but this is happening with or without you.”

Derek turned to seek out Lydia’s eyes, surprised that he wanted her opinion. Being a hero didn’t matter to him, or getting those fifteen minutes of fame. But these were his raptors, his girls, and he couldn’t send them out into the field alone.

“They’ve never been field tested before,” Scott said as he rushed from the raptor paddock. “This is crazy.”

“It’s our best chance. They’re hunters and they’ll obey,” Peter countered.

Lydia pressed her lips into a single line of displeasure, but Derek knew she was thinking about her brothers, how close they’d come to death today, how many had already died because of the park’s mistakes, how many more would die in the Indominus wasn’t stopped.

Derek knew it, too. He could do the math.

“We don’t really have a choice,” Derek admitted.

Scott threw up his hands. “They’re predators, Derek. Out in the field who knows how they’ll feel taking orders from you?”

“Then you can stay behind,” Peter suggested.

Scott’s scowl told everyone what he thought of that.

“Thought so,” Peter said, still so smug. “We’ll get the raptors set up with night-vision cameras. Should take us maybe twenty. I want these things out there and this thing stopped.”

And then Peter would move onto phase two of his plane, Derek figured. He’d always had his eyes on government funding and war profiteering.

 _Not my raptors_ , he thought. But he’d have to deal with Peter later.

The raptor paddock and surrounding area exploded with motion. InGen officers in their BDUs, park rangers in their khaki. Even Scott helped to bring the raptors into their harnesses so they could be outfitted.

Derek made his way to the raptor paddock slowly, unable to fight off a sense of dread. _This is a bad idea._

“Derek!” Lydia jogged up to him, and he was again surprised by how quickly she could move in those ridiculous heels of her. “Look I wanted to say—”

She stumbled over her words, clearly uncomfortable, but Derek only crossed his arms over his chest. He wanted to watch Lydia Martin squirm a little.

“Thank you. You know. For finding my brothers and… ah…” She waved a hand. “Everything.”

He tried not to think about the kiss, how soft and yielding her body and lips had been for that brief moment, chaos and screams all around them. He could still smell her perfume.

“We’re not out the woods yet.”

“I know,” Lydia said. “But if it weren’t for you—well, I would’ve never gotten to my brothers and who—who knows what would have… if they’d be…”

Derek knew exactly where her mind was going, how close she’d come to losing them, and put his hands on his shoulders before he even realized what he was doing. “They pretty much kept themselves alive,” he pointed out. “And you would have gotten to them one way or the other. You didn’t need me.”

Which was the truth. Lydia probably one of the most capable people Derek had ever known.

“Maybe,” Lydia agreed and drew away. She seemed to debate with herself, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. “I just wanted—I want to say thanks and… be careful.”

He was about to make a crack about sending him off to battle with a good luck kiss when her lips were on his, plush and warm. She came out of left field so often, the only thing Derek couldn’t quite seem to outthink.

“Don’t get killed, idiot,” she told him and raced away before he could pick his jaw up from the floor.

A grin curled the edges of his mouth. _What a woman._

Then it was down to brass tacks. The raptors were harnessed and hooked up with night-vision cameras that would allow Peter to watch their progress from the paddock. Derek would have liked Peter to come along, but like any good general he was going to stay behind and dictate his orders.

Though, honestly, it was probably for the best he didn’t come. Blue looked at him like he was something she particularly wanted to sink her teeth into.

“Don’t blame you.” He stroked his hands the soft underside of Blue’s neck, felt her swallow against his hand. If any of the raptors were going to challenge him it would be Blue, but he’d always had a soft spot for her. Out of all of her sisters Blue was the one bucked the most under human command, as if she knew that she was the apex predator—and they could so easily become her prey.

Her eyes slitted were locked with his, but they were calm, her lips pulled over her teeth. All good signs. Derek hoped they stayed that way.

“Hey, Derek!”

He turned and found both Max and Holt leaning against the paddock bars. They looked no worse for wear despite their race from death in the jungle, and then the harrowing escape from the pterosaurs and dimorphodons. If Lydia was anything to go by, these kids were probably very sturdy.

“Are they dangerous?” Max wanted to know.

These kids had had a hell of a day and the last thing they needed was to be exposed to more vicious dinosaurs. But Derek had never been one to lie, not even for someone’s benefit, and he’d always been upfront with how dangerous it was to pretend that these raptors were anything more or less than exactly what they were.

“Yes,” he answered. “Very.”

“What’re their names?” Holt said and nodded at the raptors behind him.

“That one’s Charlie,” he pointed to the raptor farthest left. “Then Echo. Delta. And that one—” Blue shifted her chin, as if she sensed she was being discussed. “That’s Blue. She’s the beta. The others follow her lead.”

“If she’s the beta,” Holt said, “then who’s the alpha?”

Now Derek grinned, cocky and sure. “You’re looking at him, kid.”

 

 

 

There was no way Lydia was staying in a room with Peter Hale. The man was a sleazeball. The first few weeks she’d started working at Jurassic World he’d made it a point to stop by. Ostentatiously he was visiting Dr. Wu, but she’d felt his eyes on her legs and backside.

She should have hit him then.

Instead she commandeered a tablet and one of the larger transport hummers and loaded Max and Holt into the back.

“See? Nice and safe.” Holt climbed into. Max was a little too short to make the jump, but managed with her help. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll have you home in no time.”

Max and Holt sat on top of a bench nailed down to the back wall. They looked so small and uncertain in the shadows that Lydia couldn’t stop herself from climbing up beside them.

“I want to go home,” Max said in a tiny voice when she knelt down beside him.

“Sweetie, I promise you are. Just a little while longer.” She smoothed back a wild curl from Max’s face, and glanced over at Holt. She could read the fear in his eyes easily, despite how hard he tried to hide it. “I’m going to keep you both safe, okay? No matter what happens from here on out we stick together. Because I’m your big sister, and big sisters take care of their little brothers.”

A ghost of a smile touched Max’s face. Even Holt, though he look embarrassed. Lydia reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“Alright. Now you stay back here. I’m going be right up front. Just slide that window if you need to talk to me, okay?” She stood and walked back toward the open door. “And buckle up.”

They looked at her, then looked to their sides. Where there were no seat belts.

“Then hold hands!”

In the front seat, she reached for the tablet on the dashboard and flicked it on. The video feed from the night-vision cameras on the velociraptor’s temples showed them already on the move, racing over brush and roots. One whizzed by Derek on his motorcycle.

Lydia was surprised. She knew Derek had been training the raptors, but it was one thing to know and another to see. One of the raptors looked at him, she could see it through the feed, and purposely slowed its pace. They didn’t want to pass him.

Derek had said he was the raptors’ alpha. Lydia had to admit he was right.

There was no audio from the feed but she could see the way raptors arched their necks forward, nostrils flaring, as they caught the scent of their prey. She’d read every single paper Dr. Alan Grant—foremost velociraptor expert—had ever written on the creatures she was genetically engineering. Dr. Grant might have had nothing but derision for the park, and the scientists who worked there, but the feelings were not mutual.

 _They’re pack hunters_ , Dr. Grant had written after his disastrous visit to the original park, _as I’ve seen firsthand. They’re not scavengers as some of my colleagues may argue. Their strength is their numbers, their pack bond, their cunning. They herd prey, sometimes far larger than themselves, into a kill zone, wound it in a series of shallow attacks, slashes at the arteries with its sickle-shaped claw until the prey can be brought down._

On the video feed, Derek gunned his motorcycle’s engine to keep pace with his raptors as they angled toward a copse trees. He controlled his bike deftly, undaunted by the uneven terrain and being surrounded by four ravenous predators allowed to free-range hunt for the first time in their lives.

One of the raptors—the one Derek called Blue—glanced over him and what Lydia saw on his face what could almost be called exhilaration, mouth tilted up in a half smile. He was enjoying himself, enjoying the hunt, enjoying this moment of a wild, primitive chase.

“Your boyfriend is so cool,” Max breathed behind her. She hadn’t even heard him open the back window.

She didn’t bother answering him—or correcting him. She just smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. i posted this much faster than i thought it would  
> 2\. no promises on the last part  
> 3\. man  
> 4\. i love velociraptors

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i know this is pretty spot on with the plot of jurassic world  
> 2\. i did think about doing something new(ish) but  
> 3\. have you considered that derek and lydia are basically owen and claire  
> 4\. think about it  
> 5\. the jurassic park franchise has a long, colorful, history of putting small, defenseless children in traumatic, dangerous situations involving vicious predators  
> 6\. i wanted to keep that tradition alive  
> 7\. hence lydia had brothers  
> 8\. i will try to get this updated as quickly as possible  
> 9\. but i am lazy


End file.
